Research Abstracts on Child Labour Women Labour - Nipccd

Innovative Projects
49
<strong>Research</strong> <strong>Abstracts</strong> on Child Labour, Labour and Women Labour 1998 - 2009
Innovative Projects
Prayas Institute of Juvenile Justice, New Delhi. (2007).
Child labour : Prayas' perspectives and responses. New Delhi : Prayas. 12 p.
Key Words : 1.CHILD LABOUR 2.INNOVATIVE PROJECT 3.INNOVATIVE PROGRAMME
4.TRAFFICKING CHILD LABOUR 5.CHILD TRAFFICKING LABOUR 6.REHABILITATION CHILD
LABOUR 7.STREET CHILDREN 8.VOCATIONAL TRAINING 9.GIRLS HOSTELS
10.TRAFFICKING LABOUR 11.OUT OF SCHOOL CHILDREN.
Abstract : Despite being considered the ‘supreme asset’ of our country, a large number of
children in India have remained deprived of their right to health, physical and psychological
development. Child labour is defined as paid or unpaid work of children below the age of 14
years. There is no definite or even an approximate estimate of the number of children at
work in India because of various reasons like differences in definitions, typology of the
work involved, guess estimates and varying perceptions of the different agencies working
for curbing this problem. As per 1991 census, the total number of children between 5-14
years in India was 203.3 million of which 11.28 million were working children (6.18 million
boys and 5.10 million girls). This number rose to 12.59 million in Census 2001. The 55 th Round
of the NSSO Survey conducted in 1999-2000 estimated the child labour population to be
10.4 million. These estimates are far less compared to the NGO estimates of 100 million
child labour in India possibly because it considers every out of school child to be either
engaged as child labour or as potential child labour. The reasons behind child labour are
complex and vast. At the macro level, lopsided developmental efforts in rural areas,
unemployment and underemployment, stark poverty affecting millions, globalization creating
an unsupervised employment hierarchy often misused by local level employers, and poor
infrastructure development comprise the most common reasons. The incidence of child
labour is high wherever access to primary education is low. The educational scenario in India
continues to be bleak despite programmes launched under Directive Principles of State
Policy, 93 rd Amendment reiterating universalization of free and compulsory education for
children 6-14 years and the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA). Inadequate vocational skills and
training opportunities in the existing educational system are major contributory factors to
the problem of child labour. The proportion of formally vocationally trained youth (20-24
yrs) in the labour force constitutes only 5.06% which is much below the international